5 diet tricks for glowing skin

When you are carrying around more weight than you are comfortable with it can be easy to feel self conscious, and visible weight loss can seem to take so long! What is one thing that you can focus on that may offer visible results in shorter time? Your skin!

Glowing, healthy, luminous skin…. You could spend hundreds on skincare, facials, or treatments, but is it possible to achieve it through diet?

Follow these tips to get your best skin as well as nourish your body with healthy foods.

1: Avoid insulin spikes or blood sugar crashes

The key here is regular intake of low GI foods, including moderate amounts of healthy protein at meals. Skipping meals, cutting your calories to extreme levels and then falling off the wagon and overeating as a result, or choosing foods that are digested quickly and cause blood sugar (and insulin) spikes can cause problems with your skin.

These unhealthy diets can result in higher chances of acne, wrinkles, and skin reactions or eczema, so ditch the white bread or 3pm sugar hit, and swap to regular meals with whole grains, fruit and vegetables, healthy dairy products or non dairy alternatives, and lean protein- ideally including fish rich in omega fatty acids a few times a week.

2: Get colourful

When it comes to your diet, different coloured fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and grains all have different types of nutrients. To get all the vitamins and minerals you need for healthy supple skin try and include as many different brightly coloured whole foods into your diet as possible in a week- think red and orange capsicum, green spinach, purple beetroot, yellow corn kernels, and brown lentils in a yummy salad.

Extra points for including good healthy fats here such as avocado, tuna or salmon, olive/flaxseed/canola oil, or nuts.

3: Spice things up

A great source of concentrated antioxidants is herbs and spices- fresh or dried. Not only are you adding fantastic flavour to your meals, but you are feeding your body ageing/oxidative damage fighters. Great choices are turmeric, cloves, oregano, ginger, cinnamon, basil, and mustard seeds.

4: Hydrate from the inside

Making sure your fluid intake is adequate helps keep your skin looking plumper, and while the research hasn’t shown differences in individual cell hydration levels based on more water intake, adequate fluid intake might just help prevent that “sunken eye” look we get when we are dehydrated.

5: Eat more phytoestrogens

These are foods that mimic the effects of estrogen (in a subtle way) and can be helpful in keeping our natural hormones in balance. Soy is a great source of isoflavones, so try occasionally substituting some of the dairy in your diet with soy milk.

Remember that variety is the aim here, rather than an all or nothing approach. Regular dairy products contain a lot of important nutrients, so be wary of cutting out dairy completely unless you have a particular intolerance or sensitivity.